Look-In at the 1970's: A decade of Osmonds and Horse Shit

If you were growing up in the UK during those long gone days of the 1970's then you couldn't have missed Look-In Magazine. Billed as The Junior TV Times, a listing magazine, and published by the same company it was part glossy magazine and part comic. It also featured a TV listings page aimed at the younger viewer.

It wasn't a comic I bought every week as it was often a little too girly - I tended to avoid anything that had a poster of Jimmy Osmond on the back cover,  and  besides I was more interested in the latest adventures of D-Day Dawson over in Battle Picture Weekly, but I would often pick up Look-In if I had any extra pocket money left - there was a time when I used to collect bucket of horse manure from the mountains and sell it at 10p a bucket to the old dudes down the allotments. I was an enterprising little tyke you see and often when the roses bloomed full in the village it was due in some part to my shit collecting. Some of those soiled 10p's must have gone towards Look-In.

Look-In covered it all - TV shows, pop music, football and even had a cookery page for readers to try such exotic dishes as Bolognese or toasted Weetabix and honey. You had to ensure you'd scraped that horse crap from beneath your nails before cooking, though.

Whenever there was anything popular on TV you could bet Look-In had a strip version. Over the years the magazine ran strips based on The Six Million Dollar Man, Black Beauty, On The Buses, The World at War, Follyfoot, The A Team, How the West was Won and many more - you can find a complete list HERE.

The magazine ran from 1971 - 1994, making it one of the UK's longest running comics. But it was during the Seventies that the comic was at its most popular.

Prion books have a large, hardcover collection of the best of Look-In's classic seventies material that makes a great purchase for anyone wanting to relive those days. There is also a second volume concentrating on the 80's. I bought the 7o's book myself but didn't bother with the 80's - during that period I'd become a New Romantic and was desperately seeking someone to be romantic with, my days of collecting horse shit or gazing at pin ups of Jimmy Osmond  far behind me.

Ain't nostalgia a wonderful thing!!!